Difference between an Incremental Backup and Differential Backup
How important it is to have a backup for your business? Let’s dive into understanding the purpose of a backup and which kind suits your business the best. Having a proper backup is now a crucial component of any effective disaster recovery plan. However, it is concerning that over 50% of businesses have suffered data loss due to either not having a backup system in place or not being able to access their backups when needed. Data has become an extremely valuable asset for businesses in today’s era of digital transformation. Losing this critical data can have severe consequences for organizations across all industries. In fact, a recent report suggests that the average overall cost of data breaches in 2022 was approximately $4.35 million. Backups can help to prevent data loss due to various reasons such as hardware failure, accidental deletion, theft, viruses or malware, natural disasters, or other unexpected events.
Cloud solutions have proven to be highly beneficial in terms of storing data, performing regular backups, and facilitating swift recovery during business operations, aligning with standard industry practices. Having recognized the significance and necessity of backup and recovery, let us now delve deeper into this topic and understand the difference between an incremental backup and a differential backup.
What is an Incremental Backup?
Incremental backup is a type of backup strategy that involves backing up only the changes made to the data since the last backup, instead of backing up the entire dataset every time. In other words, it only backs up the data that has been modified or added since the last backup, reducing the time and storage space required for the backup process. Incremental backups are similar to differential backups in that they also only back up the changed data. However, the difference is that incremental backups only back up the data that has changed since the last backup, whether it was a full or incremental backup. This type of backup is sometimes referred to as “differential incremental backup,” while differential backups are sometimes called “cumulative incremental backups.” Although the terminology may be confusing, it’s important to understand the differences between these backup types to make an informed decision about which one is best for your needs.
Advantages:
- Backup in minimal time
- Needs less storage
- Demand for less bandwidth